The Treasury Committee has published a Report, Credit Searches, which calls on the Office of Fair Trading and the Information Commissioner’s Office to investigate the fairness of a part of the credit market.
The Report follows an inquiry sparked by concerns that in shopping around for credit, especially for unsecured credit such as personal loans and credit cards, consumers were building up a record of credit application searches on their credit reference files and that high numbers of recorded applications in fact made it harder for them to obtain credit, or affected the rates charged.
John McFall, chairman of the Committee, said: “Christmas is precisely the time when consumers are likely to be feeling the pinch. Everyone naturally wants to be able to give their loved ones something nice. While it is right to protect consumers from potentially reckless lending equally